The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature where I talk about books I got over the last week–old or new, bought or received for review consideration (usually unsolicited). Since I hope you will find new books you’re interested in reading in these posts, I try to be as informative as possible. If I can find them, links to excerpts, author’s websites, and places where you can find more information on the book are included.

I didn’t get one of these posts up last weekend so this covers the last two weeks, but the last couple of weeks brought some books that sound rather compelling!

I’m working on a review of Octavia Butler’s Kindred that I’m hoping to get up next week, though I’m not sure if I’ll be able to finish it with the baking and cooking I’ll be doing for Thanksgiving (plus I need to start a review of Biting the Sun by Tanith Lee, the November Patreon selection, soon!).

Laura Lam’s debut novel—winner of the 2014 Bisexual Book Award for Speculative Fiction and a finalist for various other awards including the Cybils and 2014 British Fantasy Society Best Newcomer Award—was just re-released in paperback in the UK last week. It will also be coming to the US in February. The Tor UK website has an excerpt from Pantomime.

The other two books in the series, Shadowplay and Masquerade, are being released with stylistically matching covers. (I really like the new covers!)

Gene’s life resembles a debutante’s dream. Yet she hides a secret that would see her shunned by the nobility. Gene is both male and female. Then she displays unwanted magical abilities – last seen in mysterious beings from an almost-forgotten age. Matters escalate further when her parents plan a devastating betrayal, so she flees home, dressed as a boy.

The city beyond contains glowing glass relics from a lost civilization. They call to her, but she wants freedom not mysteries. So, reinvented as ‘Micah Grey’, Gene joins the circus. As an aerialist, she discovers the joy of flight – but the circus has a dark side. She’s also plagued by visions foretelling danger. A storm is howling in from the past, but will she heed its roar?

The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin by Ursula K. Le Guin

This large collection containing thirteen novellas by acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin was released last month (hardcover, ebook, audiobook). The publisher’s website has an excerpt from The Found and the Lost.

Every novella by Ursula K. Le Guin, an icon in American literature, collected for the first time—and introduced by the legendary author—in one breathtaking volume.

Ursula K. Le Guin has won multiple prizes and accolades from the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to the Newbery Honor, the Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and PEN/Malamud Awards. She has had her work collected over the years, but never as a complete retrospective of her longer works as represented in the wonderful The Found and the Lost.

This collection is a literary treasure chest that belongs in every home library.

The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin by Ursula K. Le Guin

This thick collection of thirty-nine short stories selected by Ursula K. Le Guin—some of which have won awards, including the Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and James Tiptree Jr. Awards—is available now (hardcover, ebook).

A collection of short stories by the legendary and iconic Ursula K. Le Guin—selected by the author, and combined in one volume for the first time.

The Unreal and the Real is a collection of some of Ursula K. Le Guin’s best short stories. She has won multiple prizes and accolades from the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to the Newbery Honor, the Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and PEN/Malamud Awards. She has had her work collected over the years, but this is the first short story volume combining a full range of her work.

Six Wakes will be released on January 31, 2017 (trade paperback, ebook).

A space adventure set on a lone ship where the clones of a murdered crew must find their murderer — before they kill again.

It was not common to awaken in a cloning vat streaked with drying blood.

At least, Maria Arena had never experienced it. She had no memory of how she died. That was also new; before, when she had awakened as a new clone, her first memory was of how she died.

Maria’s vat was in the front of six vats, each one holding the clone of a crew member of the starship Dormire, each clone waiting for its previous incarnation to die so it could awaken. And Maria wasn’t the only one to die recently…